The Koch Brothers and Bill Gates, See Any Similarities?

You could just about replace the words “Koch brothers” with “Bill Gates” in this 11 minute film Why Do the Koch Brothers Want to End Public Education? in terms of what’s been happening in Seattle, a school board in lock-step with the former Broad-trained superintendent and a Student Assignment Plan that brought us back to neighborhood schools and therefore the re-segregation of our schools. The lack of choice for minority students now nicely dovetails into then providing the minority communities with what they think might be their only salvation, charter schools.

The Gates backed League of Education Voters will now be doing seminars in Tukwila and Tacoma “educating” the rest of us on the wonders of charter schools. It’s interesting that LEV is circling Seattle with these seminars. I suppose that they want to start with what they see as easy pickins’ and save the battle for Seattle as the last item on their agenda before heading to Olympia during the next legislative session.

Check out this video and see if you see parallels between what has been happening in Seattle if you just replace the words “Koch Brothers” with “Bill Gates”.

Related

4 comments on “The Koch Brothers and Bill Gates, See Any Similarities?”

This post encouraged me to re-schedule my calendar to attend the League of Education Voters’ forum on Tuesday, August 23rd in Tukwila promoting charter schools. Take their poll on charters: http://www.educationvoters.org/charters/poll/
This was my comment:
I do not believe in using tax dollars to privatize our schools. As it is, the development of curriculum and text books has become monopolized by a few companies. Use this money to support and sustain programs that are working within the public school systems. There are too many administrators and not enough teachers and support staff to build relationships with students. Learning to take a test is ludicrous. Learning to become a contributing member of the community should be our goal. We should be asking to make profits off our children.

I am not surprised that outsiders would use existing prejudice in the south the push an agenda. I grew up in N.C. when schools were forced to end segregation. I remember my siblings not being able to go to school because of riots. The generation that has kids in school now would have also lived through that, and playing on that experience would not be all that hard. N.C. has come a long way since the 1970s but apparently not long enough that the tea party can’t rear its head and under the guise of “no more busing” impose segregation again. Diversity is a good thing and communities benefit from it. It was a good thing in my town in N.C and helped change race relations there. One of the things I dislike most about the Seattle NSAP is how much it impacts diversity. MGJ accomplished what Koch espouses under the guise of “economics” and “stability.” Quite awhile back someone predicted that MGJ’s mission was to break SPS to make way for charter schools and sadly it looks like that mission is working.

Dora, i really appreciate these updates. Its good to have accurate intelligence on enemy operations. I have included a link to the Koch Bros and the families Nazi past, along with some other pertinent info on their business machinations. You can google up even more on the Web. This is just a small fraction of their frightening history.

2.5 million children in the US live in poverty

To understand what that means to these children and to our country, watch Frontline : Poor Kids

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/poor-kids/

“Poverty is the new slavery.”

Dr. Cornel West

E-mail

seattled@icloud.com

Diane Ravitch

"The crisis in US education is not general and national. It is concentrated where there is poverty and segregation. Testing does not address either problem."

Bill Gates speech to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 2009

"When the tests are aligned to the common standards, the curriculum will line up as well—and that will unleash powerful market forces in the service of better teaching. For the first time, there will be a large base of customers eager to buy products that can help every kid learn and every teacher get better."

Bernie Sanders

This process -- a handful of the wealthiest people in our country controlling the political process -- is called "oligarchy."

The great political struggle we now face is whether the United States retains its democratic heritage or whether we move toward an oligarchic form of society where the real political power rests with a handful of billionaires, not ordinary Americans.

Woody Guthrie

Woody Guthrie, arguably the most revered forerunner of the Greenwich Village scene had a sign taped to his guitar during his time in World War II that read, “This machine kills fascists.” And when he returned to the states when the war was over he decided that the sign was still relevant.

“People would ask him… ‘Hey Woody, Hitler’s dead, why don’t you take the sign off? And he would reply ‘Well this fascism comes around whenever the rich people get the generals to do what they want."

Recommended Reads

More Than A Score: Jesse Hagopian

Confessions of a Bad Teacher: John Owens

Death of the Liberal Class: Chris Hedges

Dollarocracy: Robert Waterman McChesney

Reign of Error: Diane Ravitch

The Operators: Michael Hastings: Want to know where over 50% of each tax dollar is going? Read this book.

The Party is Over: Mike Lofgren

The Shock Doctrine: Naomi Klein

Danny Weil, 2009

"...charter chains would prefer national standards...
This would allow them to use prepackaged curricula across
their charter outlets no matter the location...for dummied
down standardized curriculum keeps costs down and the
dispensation is formulaic and repetitive. This is the Walmart model of education."

On standardization

"I believe in standardizing automobiles. I do not believe in standardizing human beings. Standardization is a great peril which threatens American culture."

Chris Hedges

"Any time hedge fund managers...when they walk into the inner city areas and start talking about poor children's education, it's not because they want kids to read and write, it's because they know that the federal government spends $600B on education and they want it and they're going to get it."

DIANE RAVITCH ON SCHOOL CLOSURES

"It is odd that school leaders feel triumphant when they close schools, as though they were not responsible for them. They enjoy the role of executioner, shirking any responsibility for the schools in their care."

Frederick Douglass

“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”

Chris Hedges

"There is something grotesque about the fact that education reform is being led not by educators but by financiers and speculators and billionaires."